Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a one-eyed Islamist militant leader who Chad claimed was killed in Mali last month, died by setting off explosives in despair over the death of another militant, Chad's President Idriss Deby said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

The leader of Egypt's dwindling and aging Jewish community, known for her tireless work preserving synagogues and a once-sprawling Jewish cemetery, died Saturday at the age of 82.

Michel Djotodia, whose rebel coalition Seleka seized power in the Central African Republic last month, was on Saturday elected interim president by the national transitional council.

Nine al-Shabab Islamic extremists, most wearing suicide vests, stormed Somalia's main court complex on Sunday while the Supreme Court was in session, firing a barrage of bullets during a running gun battle with security forces that lasted two hours, officials said.

Sudan's oil ministry said Sunday that the first crude from South Sudan reached its territory, bringing both impoverished nations closer to billions of dollars in revenue after a dispute over fees.

An upbeat and alert-looking Hosni Mubarak waved to his supporters after he was wheeled into a Cairo courtroom on Saturday for the first session of his retrial on charges of complicity in the killing of demonstrators during the 2011 revolt that led to his ouster.

South Africa's health minister on Monday launched a new single dose anti-AIDs drug which will simplify the world's biggest HIV treatment regime to just one life-saving pill a day.

Nigerian militants have ambushed a police boat in the oil-producing Niger Delta region, killing 12 police officers, authorities said on Sunday.

One person was killed and more than 80 wounded in clashes at the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in central Cairo on Sunday after a funeral service for four Egyptian Christians killed in sectarian violence with Muslims, state media said.

Five Egyptians were killed and eight wounded in clashes between Christians and Muslims in a town near Cairo, security sources said on Saturday, in some of the worst sectarian violence in Egypt for months.